Football for the hardcore. And the RPG fan…
Many has been the early morning I’ve blundered into the office, shielding my tired, bloodshot eyes from the glare of the harsh fluorescent lighting, all because of a Football Manager session that I haven’t been able to tear myself away from til half three in the morning. And it’s all set to start again now Sports Interactive has released the latest iteration of my addiction.
My bullet only has eyes for you…
This is one of new game modes in Call of Duty Black Ops called One in the Chamber (OIC). One bullet one kill. Miss and you’re down to your knife to get the job done and get another bullet. Simple. And why aren’t you playing it? This should really be called ‘One in the Chamber or One Blade in You’, but that’d be OIC/OBY and a bit long – regardless we are liking it’s tense feel.
This is PCF Black Op clan‘s Boomsling being annoyingly good at OIC.
If you want to play the PCF clan guys, head over to their site. They’re always looking for people to practice on and they tend to be quite chatty whilst blowing people’s heads off, which is nice.
A reference to a Sergio Leone film, a sick puppy called BLOPs and an unexplained rash… the PCF clan takes a butchers at the Black Ops multiplayer. Pictures by [PCF] Bashy.
Another year another Call of Duty title. I won’t bore you all with the plot or background details to the franchise as chances are that if you’re reading this you probably own it and have been playing it and have finished the short but sweet five to six hours single player campaign.
The Good
Multiplayer is where the longevity of the Call of Duty games lie and although this one had a fairly bumpy release (see ‘The Bad’ below ) it has a lot of potential and a few welcome changes to the multiplayer:
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is beginning to look like one of next year’s biggest PC games, thanks in no small part to its miraculous, home-brewed engine. Its draw distances are stunning, the lighting effects impressive, and the huge battles awe-inspiring and now GOG.com has announced it’s taking pre-orders of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Digital Premium Edition.
GOG.com has subsequently gone on to hint at a bright new, expanding future for the retro game download service.
Since the PM’s communications man can’t seem to stay out of the news, maybe David Cameron should try smoozing Valve’s Master of Media Intercourse, Doug Lombardi as a replacement? This is a man that knows how to spin bad news and make it feel good somehow. This arrived in the email post this morn:
Valve today announced that Portal 2 – the sequel to the ground-breaking title that won over 30 game of the year awards, despite missing its original ship date – will now be available the week of April 18th, 2011.
This two month slip not only marks the shortest delay in Valve’s proud tradition of delays, it represents the approaching convergence of Valve Time and Real Time. Though this convergence spells doom for humanity, it will not affect the new Portal 2 release date.
When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you…
Revisiting old games has long been a tricky affair. The process has been made easier by the devotion of fans running Abandonware sites for games without owners (or absent owners) and the genius of the DosBox game emulator.
But times are changing thanks be to GoG! It still surprises us how many people don’t know about GoG.com. This is a site devoted to getting the best retro games running smoothly on contemporary PCs and selling them legally, DRM-free and at a reasonable price.
Recently we weren’t that impressed when GoG.com faked it’s own death when going from beta to full release, but then it teased us with the promise of Planescape Torment and the Baldur’s Gate franchise and they’ve since delivered.
Today, it’s the turn of Baldur’s Gate 2: Complete for a mere 10 American bucks.
Call of Duty: Black Ops looks set to be another massive hit for Activision, even allowing for the company’s slightly reduced expectations for sales. Even so, on release the multiplayer performance has been less than stunning.
Many report poor frame rates and keyboard-pummelling lag. We’ve experienced similar frustrations ourselves, so here’s the PC Format quick guide for getting smoother frame rates out of your machine.
It’s more of the same, but is that such a bad thing?
The world was a different place in the 1950s. You could walk into Woolies and pick up the latest Embassy Records cover version of a chart-topping hit, recorded by session musicians and sold at a lower price than the official version. The music and lyrics were the same, only you were getting it cheaper.
Maybe things haven’t changed that much. Fallout: New Vegas feels very much like the Embassy Records version of Fallout 3. The tune’s there, but something isn’t quite right. It lacks polish, but more importantly, the freshness of the original simply isn’t there. In some ways, it may actually be better, but it still feels like a cheap cover version.
Wanna live forever? Read our handy guide…
If you’re lucky enough to live in the US, you can count yourself even luckier because Fallout New Vegas is released today. Us Euro-plebs have to wait until Friday to get our Psycho fix. But, if you’re American, according to Fallout lore your country’s going to get nuked in the Great War of 2077.
Like Fallout 3, New Vegas is set 200 years after said war, and sees you taking the role of a courier left for dead by a mysterious man. It’s very, very similar to Fallout 3, and if you’ve ravished the classic retro-future RPG you’ll know what to expect. There are a few key differences, though, and if you haven’t played Fallout for a bit it might take you a while to get back in the saddle. I’ve compiled a list of handy tips for making your trip to the wasteland a bit more pleasurable.
Classic RPG comes to the retro game site
Following its bizarre – or genius – marketing stunts of last week, Good Old Games has relaunched with a shiny new non-beta website. It’s fast becoming a comprehensive archive of old games optimised to run on the newest hardware, and the latest addition to the site, Planescape: Torment, is indicative of its focus on bringing long-lost but much-praised games to the masses.
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